As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Whitelabel Desktop App.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. That would not want a single option that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for businesses looking to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a couple of even more stress led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire technology facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of lost performance during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large error. The issues began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to users who ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “server issues” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Whitelabel Desktop App
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive cost for access to a lot of features. Yet I promptly learned this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plunge almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I could barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Whitelabel Desktop App.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons considerably outweighed any type of benefits.
No software is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage critical features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life much easier, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins depend on.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Happy support evaluates imply much less if too much concerns imply inadequate total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every unique service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra unconvinced of “too good to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you use daily should gain count on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.